OVERSEAS EMPLOYMENT

RMRRU warns of dependence on single country

Depending on a single country like the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia for employment is alarming as there should be more focus toward finding suitable job markets for Bangladeshi workers, said Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit on Thursday.The organisation also observed that despite significant rise in the country’s outbound jobs, the growth of remittance earnings remained low in outgoing year 2017.The RMMRU migration trend report, launched at a press conference at the National Press Club in the city, revealed that outflow of workers has increased by 34.15 per cent in 2017.Tasneem Siddiqui, founding chair of RMMRU who presented the report at the conference, said however that in terms of upward trend, remittance earnings could not be increased as a large number of workers were forced to return home before completing their contract period.RMMRU said that expatriate workers sent remittances of US$ 12.37 billion home during January to November period while the amount of remittances was US$ 12.65 billion during the corresponding period of 2016.The workers returned after being cheated by manpower recruiters. Mismanagement exists in the migration process where a section of private manpower recruiters, middlemen and manpower bureau officials were involved, said the RMMRU chair.As overseas migration exceeded 10 lakh people this year, it was described as great success for the country, she added.The highest number of workers was hired by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with 513,862 workers until November while Malaysia was second recruiting 83,169 workers.Tasneem Siddiqui said a small number of workers were coming to lodge complaints to concerned authority. Since inception of online cell in 2009, some 645 complaints were lodged, from which 431 were settled. She said that there was a big challenge to address irregular migration as a significant number of people travelled to Europe from Bangladesh in 2017. The government should pay attention to this area properly.If a syndicate did not prevail in the immigration sector, then more workers would have gone to Malaysia, said Siddiqui.